Month: October 2017

Illyria, written and directed by Richard Nelson, and currently enjoying its world premiere at The Public Theater, is a biographical look at The Public’s founder, Joseph Papp, and his struggles to establish the iconic New York Shakespeare Festival. It’s a dramatic tale filled with ambition, creativity, genius, pride, politics, manipulation, celebrity and historically significant events from 60 years ago. For theater and history buffs, Illyria feels like a corner seat in the room where it happened.

Even if you don’t know the Dead from the Zombies, you will still find enough catchy numbers to carry you through. On the other hand, if you’re a purest who would have trouble listening to “Touch of Grey” sung as a rousing chorus number, you might want to stay at home with your vinyl.

Gogol’s Diary of A Madman, directed by Eugene Lazare now playing at The American Theatre of Actors is a triumph of acting for Ilia Volok. Up the two flights of stairs to the small unassuming theatre is a performance of beauty and intensity.

Wow. After seeing Oedipus El Rey at The Public Theater, I don’t begrudge playwright Luis Alfaro his MacArthur Fellowship. It’s also known as the “Genius” Grant, but the MacArthur folk don’t like it when you call it that. In this case, however, it definitely applies. Alfaro takes the Oedipus story and sets it in the modern day Chicano gang culture of Southern California which is something only he would do, and it works brilliantly.